Top Hat

The American dancer Jerry Travers wakes Dale in the room below while rehearsing in a London hotel. She likes him but believes he is her friend's husband, and that mistaken identity runs the length of the film. It is not interested in plot. It is interested in dance: the story is a thin scaffold for linking four big numbers. The relationship advances inside those numbers, and everything words cannot settle gets settled in steps. The form is built on white sets, gleaming floors and Art Deco design. Irving Berlin's songs were written directly for the routines. The best-known incident on set happened during Cheek to Cheek. Ginger Rogers insisted on her blue ostrich-feather dress; it shed feathers with every move, and Fred Astaire, who was used to approving his partner's costumes, was furious. In his memoir he described the scene as looking like a chicken attacked by a coyote. The row escalated, costume designer Bernard Newman spent the night sewing feathers down one by one, and afterwards Astaire nicknamed Rogers Feathers. Mark Sandrich directed. Of the nine films the pair made together, this was the biggest hit. Who it is for: anyone who loves classic musicals, Astaire and Rogers, and Berlin's songs. Who it is not for: viewers who want a story. The script rests entirely on a misunderstanding that nobody clears up with a single sentence.